Luc Cromheecke was born in
Antwerp in 1961. After having studied painting, graphic arts and publicity at the
Royal Academy for Fine Arts of Antwerp, he created the magazine "Flan Imperial" with fellow student Fritzgerald; it featured material by Dutch artists
René Windig and
Eddie De Jong. The magazine didn't sell well despite a short review in
Robbedoes, and folded after one issue. In 1983 Cromheecke started the comic strip
Taco Zip, which appeared in
Robbedoes,
De Volkskrant, and
De Morgen. He creates in the next years the series
Tom Carbon, which appeared in the Dutch magazine
Sjors and again in
Robbedoes. Both series had an initial run of 4
albums, and Tom Carbon was translated to French and German. In 1989, he was invited by the Comics Museum in Brussels to make the material for the displays about
merchandising, for which he used a minor character from
Taco Zip, the mad alien Plunk. In the next years, Cromheecke made a number of short lived series and many illustrations for magazines and publicity campaigns. In 1994, he partook in an exposition of young talents at the
Angoulême International Comics Festival with
Lewis Trondheim and others. He also made a few CD-roms, and a short-lived series
Ben le Forestier for the French magazine
Astrapi, but in general scarcely participated in the comics scene. In 2003, Cromheecke returned with
Roboboy, a children's series about a robot child living with a normal family, and the havoc it unwillingly creates. Because of this renewed interest in his work, he started creating new stories for older series like
Tom Carbon and
Taco Zip. Together with
Jean-Michel Thiriet, he created a weekly page in
Spirou magazine. In 2006, he also created the spin-off series
Plunk for Spirou, and published the first album of
Ben de Boswachter. An exposition celebrating twenty years of
Taco Zip debuted at
Strip Turnhout in
Turnhout, traveling to different cities in
Belgium and the
Netherlands, including the comic shop
Lambiek in
Amsterdam At the end of 2005, Cromheecke drew the cover for the last issue of
Robbedoes magazine, which is also used for the last collection of Robbedoes magazines, album #262. Cromheecke cites as his influences American comic strips like
B.C. and
Peanuts. ==Bibliography==